Take a look: Electricity production in Europe right now

I am big fan of renewable energy. Last week, while visiting our German northern coast, I was amazed to see vast numbers of wind turbines dotted around the countryside. Yes, I already knew that there where a lot of them around our coastline, but I was still surprised I have to say. At one point we counted over 50+ wind turbines. And those where the ones we could see directly. Today’s post is related to this experience. Did you know that we had amazing resources to see how much electricity production we had in Europe right now?

This is the link to the electricity map of Europe. And this screenshot below shows the CO2 intensity of this electricity production per country here in Europe as on 21.02.2018.

Electricity production – Who is most sustainable in Europe?

I was very surprised to see that Poland has by a mile got the worst CO2 footprint here in Europe. The Baltic states are also not doing so great with Lithuania being the best of these 3 states.

The whole of Scandinavia is doing great. That was to be expected with the vast amounts of hydro power and wind energy facilities located in Norway and Sweden. Norway and Sweden are the most sustainable producers here in Europe. That is very clear.

Iberia was one of the positive surprises. It seems that I totally underestimated the huge amounts of wind energy production in Spain. Nearly 30%+ of all electricity production is coming from wind energy and solar energy at any point in time.

The rest of Europe is providing us with a mixed picture when we look at the electricity production CO2 footprint. France is super reliant on nuclear power whereas UK is relying heavily on burning natural gas to fill its demands. Germany as my country of residence was a surprise to me too. I never realised until now how much we are reliant on coal fired power stations. Nearly 40% of all electricity production comes from coal per 21.02.2018. Yes we Germans have a lot of solar and wind too. But the coal production is highly unsustainable in my view. If anyone from now on tells me how good we Germans are, in terms of renewable power sources, I have to counter that argument with our excessive usage of coal. This is the reality unfortunately.

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